Over the edge
by OliveBranchStories
Summary: John is the only person who doubts Sherlock's ability to survive every and any situation he gets himself into. As it turns out this doubt is well placed; Sherlock takes a tumble over a cliff and cannot save himself without John's help. One shot.


**I am currently supposed to be doing an essay for uni so I am making like a uni student and instead doing something else entirely.**

**I wrote this a while ago because it wouldn't stop raining and today I reread it, patched it up and now offer it to you, the internet, for whatever it is you do with fanfiction. (Look at it, read it, sacrifice it to a tree you mistook some time back for a minor deity, etc.) **

**Enjoy!**

* * *

**::Sherlock::**

If somebody stood on the mud and slipping rock to look down the ragged cliff face without the knowledge that there was an actual human clinging to it they may very well have missed the sodden clump of man that was Sherlock Holmes.

To the hypothetical person's credit he would've been very easy to miss. It wasn't dusk but the rain and clouds were so thick it may as well have been; the world was all greys and blacks and weathered colours. Sherlock's hair was plastered onto his face and from above looked nothing more than a slick of mud. His big coat was soaked through and covered in muck. Even the collars, usually so geometrically distinctive, had been blurred by the damp and the dirt.

That of his mind that wasn't numbed by hypothermia still ground away, determinedly going over the elements of his predicament even though none but the increasing exhaustion changed. Even though he knew he had no way to climb up and no way to descend Sherlock put the grim knowledge of futility aside and kept thinking. He knew it was illogical but did it anyway, which for him was quite uncharacteristic; it had been that sort of day.

It had been grass and weeds all the way to this unobtrusive part of the cliff; hence there were no reliable tree roots to hold onto. With the rocks small and loose and crumbly Sherlock's only option had been to dig his fingers at an awkward angle into the soil. One of his feet had a relatively stable position on a small protrusion of granite that Sherlock estimated was a part of a greater whole, buried within the cliff. The support for his other foot had only room enough for his toes and whilst his whole leg was aching from the prolonged strain the position was too tenuous for Sherlock to dare try to move.

There was dirt and rain in his eyes and blood in his mouth from where he'd bitten his tongue during his scrambling, aborted descent. As he'd caught himself on this tiny spot, which was perhaps the only place somebody could cling to on this cliff, his adversary had gone hurtling over him with a Wilhelm-esque scream.

Sherlock supposed John would've called it luck.

Sherlock called it merely an occurrence of an extremely small statistical likelihood that had happened to occur and had also happened to benefit him. He would've pointed out that if there was some cosmic force trying to increase his chances of survival then he would not be experiencing the _bad luck _that was a flat battery on his phone.

He would've argued his case but John was noticeably absent and he really couldn't waste the energy it would take to talk out loud to himself when thoughts would suffice.

John was his best option for surviving this. Sherlock knew that John would start to worry when Sherlock didn't return to the crime scene. John knew Sherlock could manage the likes of the recently deceased criminal but his ever-present ability to worry about unlikelihoods would quickly eclipse that knowledge.

Lestrade would be at the crime scene by now, and he had an unswerving faith in Sherlock's ability to come out best in every situation that could, at this point in time, prove fatal to the world's only consultant detective.

Sherlock had previously found John's ability to worry both annoying and, though he would never admit it, ever so slightly endearing.

Now his life depended on it.

**::John::**

John had seen Sherlock glean information from what looked like plain cement before. More than once he'd followed Sherlock following tracks across what seemed to be thoroughly unmarked bitumen. John could never have done that.

Fortunately for him, he didn't have to. It had been raining here for seemingly the past three months, and even then probably continuously, so not even the great Sherlock Holmes had been unable to leave tracks in this ground. The man Sherlock had been pursuing (John was disproportionately proud of his ability to tell that it was Sherlock in pursuit because his friends smaller boot-prints had been made over the man's massive tracks) had left great slips and divots from his wild flight, slips and divots so deep that they were being turned into puddles by the rain. Mindful that he may need to backtrack or that Sherlock might later need something inexplicable from this trail for evidence John followed the tracks from the left side, careful not to disturb them with his own.

The tracks led further and further away from the bright lights of the stables, heading in the opposite direction to the road where the occasion police car travelled, their flashing blue and red lights being reflected off the rain in disconcerting explosions of colour. As he walked John grew increasingly concerned and touched his hand to the side pocket on his jeans, checking for his phone. His pocket was damp and flat, he'd forgotten his phone.

"Dammit," he muttered, checking his other pockets just in case but to no avail.

It was too late to go back now. He might not need it anyway. John hoped he wouldn't need it, needing it would mean that Sherlock required help that not even John, with all of his military and medical training was capable of offering.

The tracks lead onto a grassy knoll that sloped down to the cliff bordering the coast. John could hear it being pounded by the grumbling surf through the soft and constant _sssshhhhh_ of the rain. For a while the tracks travelled parallel to the cliff, then made a sharp right angle towards it. Where the path turned the ground was torn up and the grass flattened, which John deduced meant Sherlock must've fought with the other man. The way the tracks travelled to the cliff, no longer striding out but scuffed and confused, made John think that they had still been fighting as they continued.

John hurried along the brown mud trail, looking for the point where it turned away from the cliff and proceeded off through the grass again, but the track never turned, they never even angled away. John followed the trail to where it ran right off the cliff. He looked quickly, with some desperation, from left to right, hoping to see a place where the tracks had clambered back over, but there was nothing. John threw himself to the ground in the dirt and slime of rain and army crawled carefully down the crumbling cliff edge to look down.

"Sherlock!" He called. John could see the rain falling past him and down into the shadows of the dark and distant water, the bottomless sea. Blurry whitecaps broke against the cliff with grinding crashes.

Stabbing each elbow into the soil John shielded his eyes from the rain and raked the cliff and water for any sign of his friend.

"Sherlock?"

His heart was crawling up his throat, heavy and nauseating, like he was drowning.

John thought of water closing over Sherlock's head.

But then,

"John."

"Sherlock!"

It had been him, it had been his voice. He hadn't yelled John's name, probably out of pride, the idiot, but it had certainly been Sherlock.

"Where are you?" John called.

Something moved and John's eyes latched onto it. It was Sherlock's hand, the colour of his skin flashing through the gloom where it wasn't covered in mud. Sherlock touched two fingers to his temple and brought them out, a causal salute from his perilous place.

John wanted to shake Sherlock for the blasé gesture, for scaring him, and also because shaking him would mean Sherlock was safely on solid ground.

"Well…you're in a bit of a spot…" John said.

Since becoming friends with Sherlock he had learnt to avoid such statements of the obvious, but Sherlock's current predicament had somewhat regressed his language usage to pre-Sherlock times.

"Thank you," John heard Sherlock mutter, "Again we find your powers of observation unparalleled and highly useful."

"How did you-? No, it doesn't matter. How are we getting you out of there?" John called, pressing himself further into the mud even though Sherlock was much too far away to reach.

"Better, a much more pressing line of inquiry," Sherlock said, pointing at John because apparently he couldn't stop himself from gesticulating even when clinging to a cliffside.

John could hear the tiredness in Sherlock's voice the detective was trying to hide. Having lived with the mercurial man for a few years John knew that Sherlock wasn't the sort to hide weariness or injury; in fact John sometimes felt that Sherlock thoroughly enjoyed the rants he thought up of. However, whilst Sherlock would go so far as to proclaim minor injury, he was also in the habit of carefully misdirecting John before throwing himself into danger.

Because of these reasons John knew that if Sherlock was trying to hide tiredness it meant he was exhausted, he was exhausted to the point where he felt that his body was failing him in a fundamental way, in a fatal way.

"Do you have your phone?"

"Yes, but the battery is flat."

John didn't exclaim at this, even though Sherlock was meticulous about his phone and saying it was flat was like saying he'd forgotten his pants.

"How long have you been down there?" John asked, scrutinizing the area around Sherlock for possibilities, for solutions.

"What does it matter?" Sherlock asked, apparently exasperated.

"I'm a doctor, Sherlock, it matters. How long have you been down there?"

"I estimate it only took me ten minutes to chase the butcher here, so from whenever it was I hung up on you to now, minus ten minutes. I would give you a more exact time but he stabbed my watch with that great, big carving knife he insisted on waving about."

"Well it was that or your wrist, so you should count yourself lucky," John said absently as he estimated that Sherlock must've been down the cliff for over thirty-minutes. Below him he heard Sherlock chuckle softly.

"What?"

"Nothing," Sherlock responded.

John knew he was the butt of some joke in Sherlock's internal monologue but it didn't matter.

"Were you injured? How do you feel?" He asked insistently.

"I'm fine," Sherlock said loudly.

"You've been down there for thirty-five minutes. You're cold and tired, don't look at me like that, I know you are, and I want to know if you are injured."

Sherlock didn't say anything for a moment, there was just the sound of the water pouring down from the sky and slamming into the cliff.

"I'm not hurt, John," Sherlock said in the low voice he used when he was finally taking John seriously. "Though I am exhibiting the symptoms of mild hypothermia and my legs are cramping."

"We don't have long, then," John said, falling back onto everything he had learnt in his medics training, "you'll begin to lose feeling in your hands and feet, and then hypothermia will be the least of your problems."

"Hmmm, yes," Sherlock agreed in a thoughtful tone, looking beneath his elbow to the sea below.

"So, how are we getting you out of there?" John asked.

He knew Sherlock would always have a plan, even if he was unable to execute it himself, even if he was afraid. Well, now Sherlock had John; John would execute Sherlock's plan and get him off that ledge.

**::Sherlock::**

This was not the coldest Sherlock had ever been in his life. During his university days he had done a series of experiments on the effect of varying temperatures on his metabolism and consciousness in which he had sat in ice-baths significantly colder than this rain for much longer times. However, he'd been in control of those situations; he was not in control of this one.

He was helpless, a thought that rankled but somehow, for some reason, would've been much worse if he'd been relying on anyone other than John to help him.

Sherlock always had extremely high expectations of himself and was resolute in their fulfillment. This lead to everybody who had been around him for any length of time also having extremely high expectations of him. This was good, until of course it wasn't. Because then when Sherlock couldn't do something alone the barrier of his pride was so much higher; he wouldn't just be needing help but would have to admit his inadequacy. People never failed to suddenly question everything about him, ever failed to, upon seeing him acting human as somehow being reduced to something lesser then their human selves, mock him.

Sherlock generally didn't care that Donovan and Anderson thought, they were stupid, but he couldn't stand mockery, not from anyone.

But John had never made him feel like this. John always acted as if Sherlock's brilliance was just that, brilliant, and not his normal state of being. Whereas if Sherlock did something as mundane as eating food in front of Lestrade it would blow the man's mind, John was surprised when Sherlock went hungry. It was odd and had never changed.

Sometimes, when Sherlock wasn't thinking about John's analytical short fallings, he wondered if John in fact knew Sherlock was naturally brilliant but, despite that knowledge, continued to act otherwise, as if he was determined that at least one person in the world would treat Sherlock as a normal human being.

Times like now supported the second hypothesis, where John asked for Sherlock's physical wellbeing as well as the results of his mind.

Flexing his freezing fingers in the wet soil, Sherlock knew that the chances of him being able to hold onto a rope and be dragged up over the cliff were small and ever decreasing.

"I don't suppose you brought any rope?" Sherlock called up the cliff to John.

"No," John called back.

"Well, you're going to have to go back anyway," Sherlock said. "At the stables there will be a lot of horse leads. Detach a large clip from one of those leads and attach it to a length of rope and bring it back. You might want to get a vehicle of some kind to attach the rope to as the edge of the cliff is slippery and whilst I acknowledge you military prowess you won't be able to pull me up yourself."

"Thank you for the vote of confidence."

Sherlock frowned, "I was actually expressing-"

"I know what you were expressing, I was being sarcastic," John said loudly.

Sherlock, detecting that he had said something upsetting, did not respond, instead choosing to wait until John calmed down.

"That would take me at least fifteen minutes, probably more," John said after a moment of internal calculations.

"You better get cracking then," Sherlock said; he was rather keen to get off this wretched ledge.

John didn't say anything. Knowing John hadn't left, he would never knowingly leave Sherlock in such a situation without some sort of protracted good bye, Sherlock peered up into the rain again.

"You have to promise me you will be here when I get back."

"What?"

"You have to promise me you will be here when I get back."

"What are you talking about?" Sherlock blinked the rain out of his eyes. John was a blurred shadow above him. "Of course I will be here when you get back. It's not like I have anywhere else to be."

"Enough bravado, Sherlock," John said. "Your hands will get colder and your legs will only get more tired. I don't want to come back to an empty ledge."

"You won't John, I'll be here," Sherlock said, stubbornly and slightly irritable.

"Promise me."

"This is ridiculous."

"Promise me Sherlock."

It suddenly dawned on Sherlock that John was afraid, of course he was. John was such a worrier, it was indeed his worry that had lead him here, yet somehow Sherlock had forgotten that he would be feeling fear.

Sherlock was afraid now, with nothing between him and a treacherous sea except a slippery rock and trembling muscles, though he loathed to admit it. He also knew that had his and John's positions been reversed he would afraid then as well.

But he had forgotten that John could feel fear for him.

When John was in danger he felt these unfamiliar feelings; fear, _doubt_. When Sherlock himself was in danger it was only facts and cold analysis, he forgot that other people were involved, were having thoughts of their own about his predicament.

Sherlock was so unfamiliar with having a friend, with having somebody worrying about him, that every time he got in danger and John worried felt like the first time.

Yes they'd known each other for years, but Sherlock had a lifetime to unlearn.

Sherlock looked up.

John didn't look afraid. He was, Sherlock knew he was, but he didn't look it.

Bravery it was, then.

In forgetting fear, Sherlock kept forgetting bravery as well.

"I promise, John," He said, rain running down his face.

**::John::**

With Sherlock's answer, without John's excuse of insisting for a promise giving him a reason to remain, he froze. Hunched and miserable, though quivering still with the urgency of the situation, John felt torn between leaving and staying. Even though leaving was not leaving behind and staying was not loyalty John couldn't tear himself away. All he could think of was Sherlock dying when he was gone and returning to a lonely cliff.

He knew Sherlock would've noticed his silence, his stillness. He felt silly and then overpoweringly amazed that in such a dire situation he was worrying about looking foolish.

"John."

John looked down.

"It's okay."

Sherlock was looking up at him. His tone was not soft and gentle, not harsh or in any way insistent. His voice was calm and factual, as if things really were okay.

Something scrambled in John's chest like a car skidding sideward on black ice; John thought that it may have been his heart.

"I'll be here."

A charge went through him, clarity breaking through his feelings. Staying out of fear for Sherlock's life would only imperil the man further. John had to think, had to leave. John pushed himself to his feet quickly but also warily, he stood with his knees bent and his feet dug into the ground.

He looked at Sherlock, he didn't know what to say but he had to _go. _

"I'll be back," he said, sounding fiercer then he had intended, accidentally sounding brave.

"I know," Sherlock called back, still unable to let anybody but himself have the last word. "Now go!"

John turned and left, leaving Sherlock behind as quickly as possible so that he could return to him as soon as he could.


End file.
